ArcaMax

Washington -- Let us now digress from my usual preoccupation, which is politics, to the world of athletics or to the world of athletics as it is affected by culture wars. Of course, culture wars are politics by another name. Alas, we never can completely escape politics. If I wanted to write this week about cuisine at some point, I fear I would ...Read more

Washington -- At the end of the Cold War, former President Ronald Reagan and his successor, President George H.W. Bush, were two happy statesmen. They had achieved their prized goal, an end to hostilities with the USSR. For that matter, the Russian President, Mikhail Gorbachev, and his successor, President Boris Yeltsin, were pretty happy, too. ...Read more

Washington -- I have been thinking about who my Man of the Year might be this year. And, by the way, who my Woman of the Year might be also. Of course, times are changing fast. Possibly I should be thinking about who my Transgender Person of the Year might be. It has been a complicated year. What with COVID-19 and not one but two Cuomos out of ...Read more

Washington -- Do you recall how often our friends the progressives have rushed to tell us how we can save conservatism from self-destruction? It seems just a year ago that they diagnosed sudden calamity for conservatism. Then they were quick to tell us that all we had to do to save ourselves from disintegration was to join the progressives in ...Read more

Washington -- He is alive! Norman Podhoretz is alive, and he agreed to an interview with The Wall Street Journal's very perceptive Barton Swaim this weekend. He says that many of his peers are now deceased but not him, and he certainly did not sound deceased. Bill Buckley and Irving Kristol have given up the ghost, and American political ...Read more

Washington -- One of my favorite findings about liberals -- now called progressives -- is that they always go too far. Even when they are pursuing a noble goal, they almost always take it to extremes and end up headed toward disaster.

Consider the goal of relieving poverty. It attracts not only the virtue flaunters but also the truly virtuous. ...Read more

Washington -- Whew, I got my column accepted last week at the Washington Times with no intrusion from the censors. In fact, with no censors! At the Good Times, there are no censors at work. I used to write this column on a weekly basis for The Washington Post, and it could be a harrowing experience. Every week, I had to be certain that I had ...Read more

Washington -- One of my favorite candidates in the 2020 race for the Democratic nomination has just announced that he is running for high office once again in 2022. He is Beto O'Rourke, and he is one of the great innovators in recent American politics. Of course, he is one of the great losers in recent American politics, too, having lost in 2018...Read more

Washington -- Are you familiar with the work of professor Simon Gottschalk? I have only become familiar with his work recently, but I commend it to you. He is a professor of sociology with the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. He apparently watches a lot of television in the course of his work, and he even takes notes. He has come up with a ...Read more

Washington -- I am probably one of the few conservatives in America who wanted to see Terry McAuliffe win his lackadaisical campaign for a second term as governor of Virginia last week. He spent munificently. He brought in all the Democratic Party's big guns for help. He even tapped Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden, as ...Read more

Washington -- I was shot last week. No, I was not shot by any of the roving bands of white supremacists who, I am told by the media, ply their hate so freely here in Northern Virginia. Nor was I shot by the Ku Kluxers who inhabit these parts and whom the present governor, Ralph Northam, has done so little to oppose -- has Northam been concealing...Read more

Washington -- Remember the days when --pre-presidency! -- Joe Biden used to be given to uttering gaffes? He would utter a lot of them. I remember him in debate with the pulchritudinous Sarah Palin. In fact, he made so many gaffes we began calling him the gaffable Joe Biden. We may look back on those days and call them the "Good Old Days." Now he...Read more

Washington -- In September, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich sat down with the Washington Times -- known amongst the cognoscenti as the "Good Times" --and made me wish he had never left the House of Representatives. Everything he said made perfect sense, including, I presume, an "Excuse me" or two when he sneezed. It is hay ...Read more